Ben Wright breaks down why storytelling closes deals: people decide emotionally, then rationalize. He shares a three-part framework (Problem, Solution, Impact) and a real example where four quoting changes doubled a trades company's revenue in eight weeks. Build a library of 20 stories and use templates to teach your whole team.
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In this podcast, you will learn how to deliver a story that resonates with your customers and gets you closer to a yes for every sale.
Welcome to Sales Process Made Easy. The show helping seven to eight figure industry construction and trade sales and business leaders. Finally, end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host Ben Wright, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years.
By the end of this episode, you should have a really clear understanding around why stories are so important. We'll certainly recap Steve Jobs and our episode from Wednesday. You should be ready to roll out a three prong storytelling format that will help you tell stories instantly and last but not least, have an idea around how you can help your team tell more stories. So let's get straight into it. Why stories? Well, we explored on Wednesday's episode around Steve Jobs and I'd really encourage you to go back and listen to that if you have a moment. But what we explored here was the importance of emotional connection. People decide emotionally and justify rationally. I could not sum it better than that statement that that where we can have our customers choosing us at an emotional level before the rational brain kicks in. That our close rates will drive significantly higher than just about any other change we could make to our sales process. And the reason is that once we win the emotional brain, it generally takes over from the rational and we simply end up justifying the decision as we move through the sales process. Now the good news is that that emotional connection can be through the salesperson we're dealing with. It's not just about the product, it's not just about the service, but it can also be about the brand or the person that we're dealing with. So our salespeople, by telling great stories, are able to really build that emotional connection with their customers. So how do we tell a great story? I've used a very simple framework for 15 years now that for me is really powerful in helping people who aren't necessarily great storytellers, but allow them to actually tell those stories, right? To move from being someone who fears telling a story to someone who has a framework they can follow that will help them get a story out that has some impact. So that format that I recommend people follow and I have seen thousands of stories created around is one where we focus on the problem or the opportunity, the solution and the impact. And it goes something like this that the start of every story we focus on what the problem is that we are trying to solve. So in my instance as a sales strategist, I am trying to help leaders grow their sales. And the problem I'm specifically trying to solve is that I'm trying to help them grow more sales, to reduce stress, to reduce anxiety and give them some clarity in the future that their business is going to grow and provide them the life that they'd like to lead. Now that's a clear, easy way to explain the problem or opportunity. Here's what I'm trying to do. The solution when telling stories is to talk through what we've done in the past. So if I was to give an example around a customer I've worked with very much in the trades related industry, this customer came to me and their life was a roller coaster. They were struggling to find time away from work to be with their family and also didn't have a sales machine that was growing. So we sat down, we worked through their quoting process and made four changes to how they quoted. Now those four changes were implemented within seven days and eight weeks later. And I quote, unquote, this business leader had said that I had changed their life. And the reason that I had done that is where we come to the third part of that framework and the impact that, that you've changed my life quote had on this person's business is where we come to the third part of the framework. So let me just recap there to make this nice and simple. What's the problem or opportunity that we are solving for our customer in my instance, helping them grow their business sales and reduce stress and or anxiety. What's the solution we provided to help them get to that step or to help them take that step? In my instance, it was a review of the quote process to change four steps in seven days and the impact that it had was a changing of their life. Right. But more specifically in my instance, the impact here is that we actually doubled sales numbers in an eight week period. So we took that business from where it was to double the sales revenue across an eight week journey. So problem solution, impact format. Now if I was to roll that story out into something that's a little bit more succinct when I'm talking to a customer if it would go something like this. Earlier this year I worked with a contracting group who had a leader that was really struggling to grow their sales. In fact, it was causing them a lot of anxiety and they really weren't present with their family at home. So what we did was we sat down, we Had a look at their quote process. We made four changes to that which we were able to roll out in seven days, eight weeks later, and quote, unquote, the customer's feedback was that we changed their life. And really the result here, that was most important was that we grew their revenue by 2. So we doubled their revenue over an eight week period. That all came back from simply changing four parts of their quote process. So what we've done there in the story is we've highlighted the problem, we've spoken through the solution and the impact that it had on the business. Now that's it. To be able to tell a good story, that's all you need to be able to do. Problem, solution, impact. Get that right and we have a team that will be able to roll out stories on tap. Now, where it gets interesting is that for salespeople, it's not always easy to remember these stories on cue. In fact, it can be really difficult to draw from a well of stories unless you've had them created and really internalized. So where I see teams really nail this is that they offline when they're not in front of customers, bring their teams together and ask them to produce a number of stories following that format. At the very least, we have a ChatGPT prompt that they can use to paste in with the facts from their story and it'll roll one out for them. Now, it doesn't create a perfect story, but it certainly helps. So what we work with our teams to do is to make sure they can build a repository of 20 stories across their salespeople built offline that are then stored in a central database for everyone to reference. And the idea here is that the team can remember the story about the contractor or the printer or the food manufacturer or the lawyer or whoever it was that they helped. But was it? But also the types of problems that they solved. Growth expenses, cash flow, cultural problems, winning new customers, and even then, the type of results they achieved. Rapid sales growth, reduction in complexity, ease of working with a team, retention, whatever it may be, right? So when we can build out all of these stories and put them into a database, we have a central point where all of our teams can go and draw from. Now that is the easy way to get stories rolling. Bring your team together, get everyone creating them offline so that we have a well that they can draw from. From there you can build out case studies. From there, you can build out videos. From there you can build out lots of different ways to be rolling stories out to your customers and really Help your sales team remember them. So to recap today, stories are super important because they help our customers decide emotionally and justify rationally. We know that when we get that nailed, we are far more likely to close deals. A format to follow is the Problem, Solution and impact framework and how we get that done for our teams is to bring them together offline, create the stories, store them, use Some help from ChatGPT if you need to, but absolutely make sure we get them written down. So that's it for today. Thank you. I'm very grateful for you tuning in to the 25 years of sales experience that we bring to this podcast. We're here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. They should be in your car. When you get in slightly different time zones, we'll have obviously different drop rates. But out of today, the key call to action is to bring your team together and get them to start recording stories. The sooner you start, the sooner we can help our customers decide emotionally and justify rationally. Between now and our next episode. A have a great weekend, but B keep focusing on how you and your team can be 1% better each and every day because it will make all the difference. Bye for now.
Are you struggling to grow your monthly sales numbers? Feel like you've reached a sales ceiling, are involved in every deal, or have no real sales system in place to help you grow? And is that causing a level of worry or stress about how you can get more sales in the future?
If that's you, that's exactly why we.
Created the Sold Out Sales Teams program to help you get month on month.
Sales growth with less stress.
In just the first week, we will lock down your quoting process to grow sales by 25 to 30%. And that's just week one. And for the first three podcast listeners.
That we speak to this week, we'll.
Offer you a bonus one on one strategy session with me to make sure you can pay off your investment even faster. Which by the way, for most businesses.
Is only one or two extra sales.
To book in, click the link in our show notes. It's a direct calendar link so you can instantly confirm your meeting time.
